It is often desirable to provide products such as catheters, blood bags, chromatography media, membranes, cell culture ware and the like with surfaced which have particular, predetermined characteristics. For example, it may be desirable to provide guide wires and catheters with external surfaces that permit them to slide easily within the vascular system of a human or other animal. It may be appropriate to provide the surfaces of prostheses that are to be implanted within the body with growth factors or similar chemical species that may contribute to the rapid proliferation of tissue on the prosthesis or, to the contrary, with chemical species for the purpose of prevention ongrowth of tissue. Some devices such as artificial eyes desirably have surfaces that are wettable and lubricious to the touch and that hence are comfortably received within the eyes socket. Poorly adherent surfaces, as of certain polymers, may be treated to improve adhesive characteristics. Blood bags and other tubes which may come into contact with blood may be treated with hemocompatible agents such as heparin or a heparin derivative. Bandages or other devices which come into contact with wounds may have surfaces that are provided with antibiotic materials. Various diagnostic tests may involve test protocols in which antibodies or antigens are covalently immobilized upon a surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,122 (Sheefers) refers to the use of a heterobifunctional photoactivatable compound, one functional group being an aryl azide and the other being an N-hydroxysuccinimide ester to bind an antibody or other protein to a solid surface.
A series of papers by Guire, et al describes the use of polyfunctional photoderivatives of glucose oxidase and catalase in association with concanavalin A and glucose oxidase, respectively: Guire et al, Stepwise-Crosslinking Reagents for Photocoupling of Enzymes and Lectins to Mammalian Cells, Glycoconjugate Research II, pp. 1051-1054, (1979); Guire et al, Stepwise Thermophotochemical Crosslinking for Enzyme Stabilization and Immobilization; Enzyme Engineering 3, pp. 63-70 (1978); and Guire et al, Photochemical Coupling of Enzymes to Mammalian Cells, Pharmacological Research Communications, 9, No. 2, pp 131-141 (1977).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,959 (Guire) refers to a biocompatible device in which various molecules such as cell attachment factors are covalently bonded to a solid surface through a chemical linking moiety.
International Application No. PCT/US88/04487 published Feb. 8, 1990 (Guire et al) refers to the bonding of various polymeric species to a solid surface through the use of latent reactive groups.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,959,078 (Guire) refers to the bonding of enzymes to a surface using a chemical linker employing an aryl azide photochemical group.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,089 (Smith III) teaches bonding a biologically active compound to a surface through a bifunctional linking compound by first attaching that compound to a surface via a phenyl azide group and then attaching the linking compound to the biologically active compound through an s-triazine group.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,024,742 (Nesburn et al) teaches a method of crosslinking collagen molecules to themselves or to other surfaces using a heterobifunctional reagent.
To covalently bond a specific chemical specie to a surface through photoactivation, a photoreactive group or other latent reactive group usually is first attached to the chemical specie and thereafter is activated to cause covalent bonding to the solid surface. Although procedures of this type have been quite successful, it has been necessary to manufacture latent reactive group-containing derivatives of each of the chemical species that one wishes to covalently bond to a surface. For example, heparin may be photoderivatized as taught in International Application No. PCT/US88/04487 published Feb. 8, 1990 and may be applied to various devices that come into contact with blood such as blood bags, tubes, and the like. However, the synthesis of latent reactive group-containing derivatives of various chemical species can be very expensive, both from the standpoint of developing the protocol for the synthesis of the derivative and also with respect to the manufacture of commercial quantities of the derivative.
It is also possible to attach desired chemicals to a surface by first providing the surface with latent reactive groups, then bringing the desired molecules into bonding association with the latent reactive groups, and activating the latent reactive groups to cause the formation of covalent bonds. Reference is made particularly to U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,906 (Guire). The method of this patent is dependent upon the ability of the target molecules to diffuse into bonding association with the latent reactive groups carried by the solid surface, however, and is highly selective of the target molecules that are to be attached.